


Alone

by DeutchRemy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: El&Hop, Father-Daughter Relationship, Season 1, Season 2, betweenseasons, cabin life, dadhop!, season 1.5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26147875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeutchRemy/pseuds/DeutchRemy
Summary: How does El handle being alone in the cabin when Hopper goes to Chicago with Will and Joyce?  Please read and review!!!!!
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to take the opportunity to make a plea for more Hop & El writers to step up to the plate and write some fics!!! Please!!!!

The storm is far off in the distance, producing only low rumbles, but the little girl cries anyway. She’s alone in the cabin yet she keeps her tears silent, as she learned to do at the lab because she knew nobody would hold her.

The gentle patter of rain begins on the roof and she rolls over in her sweaty bed, clutching her teddy tighter to her chest. It’s wrapped in a flannel of Hop’s that she pulled off his bedpost. She figured he wouldn’t mind. The smell comforts her yet, ironically, makes her cry more. She wants him to be home.

She tries to remind herself that he’s only gone for one night, accompanying Joyce and Will to see a special doctor in a big city.

El doesn’t like Will much at the moment. 

She feels guilty for thinking it, and cries until her eyes are nearly swollen shut and her nose is completely plugged, forcing her to breathe through her mouth. 

A mouth-breather, she thinks with horror.

A low rumble of thunder echoes through the forest and seems to go on for an eternity. She’s never heard a rumble last that long; what if it means something bad? Hop’s told her multiple times that thunder can’t hurt her, that it’s just talking back to the lightning, but when you’re not yet thirteen and weather is a new concept and you’re all alone at night in the woods, you have a hard time believing that.

El contemplates getting out of bed and moving to the couch. Perhaps the drone of the television will lull her to sleep. But she nixes the idea as soon as she realizes that she’ll have to traverse the empty house. No, she’ll stay in this bed until the sun rises, thank you very much.

But eventually she has to pee, apparently not having cried and sweat out all of her fluids, and she knows she can’t ignore it or she’ll have an accident. And she can’t have an accident because Hop always helps her clean it up and she doesn’t know if she’d be able to do it on her own…

The girl waits until her bladder is painfully distended before working up the nerve to expose her bare ankles to whatever might be hiding under her bed. The night is very warm, and her pajamas are stuck to her skin with sweat. After doing her business, which takes forever because her bladder is so full, she’s even more awake than she was earlier, so she pads into the living room and sits on the couch, switching the television on with her mind.

It’s just snow on all of the channels but she leaves the set on anyway as she stretches to the far end of the couch to retrieve her and Hop’s latest daytime book, Harriet The Spy. They have a daytime book and a nighttime book. On Hop’s days off, he’ll spend hours reading to her from the daytime book, so that the often-better nighttime book can be preserved for bedtime.

El flips to the dog-eared page where they left off, confident that she’s followed along with Hop while he read for long enough now to be able to decipher the words…and is horrifyingly disappointed when she realizes she can only make out the most basic ones. The. Harriet. Said. His. You. To.

Tears well up in her eyes again and she shuts the book and flings it to the corner of the room. She doesn’t want to feel sorry for herself. She never felt sorry for herself in the lab. But then she found Hopper and he taught her about self-worth and that she’s a person and that it’s okay to cry and scream if she needs to.

She looks at the static on the screen, then over at the book in the corner. Yesterday, when Hop left with Joyce and Will, should have been one of his days off. Sat-ur-day, he calls it. They would probably have read five chapters just between lunch and dinner.

The tears come again and run over this time, leaking out of her painfully-swollen eyes and running hot down her cheeks. She picks her nails nervously, loudly enough to drown out both the rain on the roof and the static on the television.

She glances at the clock. Two-zero-two AM. Hopper told her that AM means morning. He told her he’d be back between eight-zero-zero and ten-zero-zero AM. El counts on her fingers. That means…he should be home in…may six hours. If she did the counting right.

Relief floods her, and she wants to stop crying, but can’t seem to. The tears just keep coming, making dots on her flowery pajama pants.

Stupid Will, the girl thinks to herself. Always with his doctors appointments. It’s not his fault, though. It’s hers. If she hadn’t opened the gate in the first place, he never would have been taken. He wouldn’t have to have these doctors appointments.

And she’d still be at the lab. And she wouldn’t have Hopper.

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, her growing curls bouncing. Her full head of hair is a reminder, no matter how small, of what she’s gained since opening that gate. Of what she’s gained and what Will has lost, so she realizes then that she can’t complain about him occupying Hopper’s time.

Hopper told her about emotions and that she has the right to show every single one of them. That he wants her to be happy first and foremost but that she’s allowed to be sad, angry, jealous, and that it’s okay to show those emotions.

But no. She disagrees with him. It’s not okay for her to feel sorry for herself. Not when Will has lost and she has gained. 

She sits forward and slams her fist once into the coffee table. Hard. Her middle knuckle begins to weep a spot of blood. There. Now she won’t catch herself feeling sorry for herself again.

***

Hopper has to perform the secret knock four times, prompting a mild panic in him, before the locks slide out of place. He pushes the door open and is greeted by the sound of Sunday morning cartoons and a rustling of blankets as a small girl pushes herself into a sitting position on his cot. 

She has a serious case of bedhead and her eyes look…much redder than normal sleepy eyes and are quite swollen.

“Hey…”

He drops his stuff in the doorway and moves to her, sitting on the edge of the cot and placing a hand on the girl’s back, steadying her as she clumsily shuffles closer to him and leans heavily against his side, the blanket tangled around her legs.

“How you doin, kid?” 

She makes a whining sound in response, as if she’s afraid to open her mouth, and nuzzles her face into the man’s shoulder.

“Yeah I missed you, too.” He feels the tears on his shirt, then. “El, what’s the matter?”

“don’t go again.”

“Well hopefully I won’t have to since that doctor in Chicago wasn’t much help to Will.”

“d-don’t go again.” It’s as if she didn’t even hear him.

“Hey hey, El, I won’t go again, okay? I promise.” He feels her shake against his side. “El? Shit, c’mere.” He grabs her by the armpits and pulls her onto his lap, the blanket dragged along with her.

Did I fuck up? Hop wonders to himself. Joyce’s kid needed to see a specialist, yes, but should he have accompanied them at the expense of his own kid, who’s drenched in sweat and trembling on his lap? 

He never should have left her here alone overnight. She’s a child, for god’s sake!

“Did something happen while I was gone?” He asks, rocking her gently from side to side.

“storm.”

“There was a storm?”

El lets out a long squealing sound as she completely dissolves in tears, sobbing loudly in his arms, her entire body shaking uncontrollably.

Shit. 

“Jesus. El, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here.”

“don’t go again.”

“I will not go again. I pr-“ He notices her knuckle and gently takes her hand in his. “Hey, what happened here?”

Silence.

“El?”

“n-nothing.”

“Yeah? Doesn’t look like nothing.” The man strokes his thumb along the bruised knuckle.

“mad.”

“You got mad and you…punched something?”

“bad thoughts.”

“So…you were thinking bad thoughts so you had to punish yourself?”

She nods.

“What kind of bad thoughts?”

El whines and turns her face into Hop’s neck.

“El? What kind of bad thoughts? Talk to me, kid.”

“was…mad at Will. wanted you home.”

Hop sighs. “El, those aren’t bad thoughts. Certainly nothing to punish yourself over. I mean, shit, kid, you could’ve really hurt yourself.”

“sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, you have nothing to apologize for, okay?” He rests his cheek on the top of her head. Yep, he fucked up big time. Joyce would have been fine taking Will to Chicago by herself. There was no need for him to be so goddamned irresponsible as to leave a twelve-year-old girl, telekinetic or not, by herself in a cabin in the woods overnight.

Twenty minutes later he’s got the kid on the sofa, a plate of Eggos with extra syrup and whipped cream balanced on her lap, and he’s reading to her from their daytime book, which he located, oddly enough, in the corner of the room. 

Although he’s reading aloud to her, Hopper pays little attention to the words on the page. His mind is on El and the fact that she’s only picking at her favorite meal. He wonders how he’ll be able to heal her psychological wounds. How he’ll be able to juggle her needs with Will’s needs while still keeping her a secret.


End file.
